Next week (1st to 5th October) Tales of Empire – four short stories by four historical fiction authors – will be FREE on Amazon. One of those authors is Jacqueline Reiter who dabbles in fiction but whose main writing efforts are impressive works of historical non-fiction. The latest is Quicksilver Captain, her biography of the man famous for developing the flag code used by Nelson at Trafalgar (“England expects that every man will do his duty”). Arguably, he was responsible for the British invasion of Buenos Aires that features in my book, Burke in the Land of Silver. He did much, much more in his remarkable life and I’m delighted to host Dr Reiter to introduce him on my blog.
Quicksilver Captain
Quicksilver Captain: The improbable life of Sir Home Popham is about one of the more under-appreciated characters of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Popham (1762–1820) was a Royal Navy captain for most of the period, the era of Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower. In contrast to his fictional counterparts, however, Popham’s real-life exploits were almost too strange – too improbable –for a novel.
Popham is best known as a scientific officer who invented the naval signal code used by Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, and as the instigator of the British invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806 (he appears in Tom Williams’s Burke in the Land of Silver, which uses this campaign as a backdrop). But Popham first came to prominence helping the British army evacuate from Germany in 1795, where it had been abandoned by its allies and was being hounded by the French. This made Popham’s reputation as an expert in amphibious operations and got him promoted to post-captain through the personal intercession of the army’s commander, the Duke of York. This did not make Popham popular in his own profession: his Navy peers always considered him, to quote my book, “as a charlatan who had got lucky with the Army”. [1] He didn’t care. His exploits in Flanders allowed him to stand out from the crowd of other post-captains looking for employment, and he usually took on the trickier, often dirtier, jobs nobody else wanted to do. He was, as one military man put it, ‘very useful upon all occasions and in all ways’. [2]
Popham was much more than just a ship’s captain – in fact the one place he was almost certain not to be, throughout his career, was aboard his own ship. He acted as an agent for transports, a diplomat, an intelligence officer, a Member of Parliament, a hydrographer, a scientist and inventor, a publicist, and a government adviser. He muscled himself into the trust of some of Britain’s most prominent politicians, including prime minister William Pitt and Secretary of State for War Henry Dundas. Despite only being a post-captain for most of the wars with France, his political contacts meant he punched well above his weight: he influenced several important British campaigns all over the world, not just at Buenos Aires but in Europe, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean, and Africa.
Britain, with its nascent empire, had trade networks and military concerns all over the world, and much of British strategy revolved around protecting its colonies and securing strategic naval stations – as well as destroying, or more preferably capturing, those of the enemy. The foremost proponent of this ‘blue-water’ strategy during the wars was Popham’s main patron, Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville, who believed ‘It is … as much the duty of those entrusted with the conduct of a British war to cut off the colonial resources of the enemy, as it would be that of the general of a great army to destroy or intercept the magazines of his opponent. … Exertions of that nature ought to admit of no limitation’. [3] Popham wholeheartedly agreed. Fuelled by ambition and supreme self-confidence, he became very good at shaping his ideas to suit the inclinations of the politicians – in other words, at telling his patrons what they wanted to hear.
Popham’s career involved taking risks and pushing boundaries, which often led to controversy (as at Buenos Aires), and his schemes were not always successful. His reputation was mixed in his own lifetime: he was described by one disapproving contemporary as a kind of ‘Naval Quack’. [4] Historians have mostly agreed with this; the most recent assessment of his career described him as ‘a gambler … a fiddler, a filibuster, a raider, a buccaneer and a freebooter’. [5] It did not help that Popham had once run his own smuggling vessel, and his exploits at Buenos Aires, which led to his court-martial, did not help. Still, Popham should not be dismissed so lightly. His rollercoaster career shows how one man could help shape an unfocused, but dynamic, British strategy during the wars against Napoleonic France. I definitely found Quicksilver Captain a story worth telling – and I hope readers will agree.
Notes
[1] Jacqueline Reiter, Quicksilver Captain: The improbable life of Sir Home Popham (Warwick: Helion & Co., 2024), p. 233
[2] Francis Culling Carr-Gomm (ed.), Letters and Journals of Field-Marshal Sir William Maynard Gomm, GCB … (London: John Murray, 1881), pp. 131–132
[3] Speech by Henry Dundas, 25 March 1801, as reported in William Cobbett, Parliamentary History of England … to 1803 … (London, 1819), vol. 35,cols. 1072–1073
[4] The British Library G.19449, p. xxv: marginal comment by Benjamin Tucker in his copy of A Full and Correct Report of the Trial of Sir Home Popham (London: J. and J. Richardson, 1807)
[5] Chris Coelho, ‘The Popham Code Controversy’, in J.E. Pearson, S. Heuvel, and J. Rodgaard (eds), The Trafalgar Chronicle: New Series 5 (Barnsley: Seaforth Publications), pp. 133–147, p. 133
Picture credits
Sir Home Popham, by Anthony Cardon after Mather Brown, 1807 (Public domain, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)
Attack upon Buenos Aires by General Beresford, engraver unknown, 1806 (Public domain, Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)
Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, by R. Freeman after Henry Raeburn (Public domain, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library)
Further reading
Hugh Popham, A Damned Cunning Fellow: The Eventful Life of Rear Admiral Sir Home Popham KCB, KCH, KM, FRS 1762–1820 (Tywardreath: Old Ferry Press, 1991)
About Jacqueline Reiter
Jacqueline Reiter received her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2006. Her first book, The Late Lord: the Life of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham (Pen and Sword, 2017), illuminated the career of Pitt the Younger’s elder brother. Her articles have appeared in History Today and the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research; she has written for the History of Parliament and co-written a chapter with John Bew on British war aims for the Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars. Her latest book, Quicksilver Captain: The Improbable Life of Sir Home Popham, is published by Helion.
Tales of Empire
Tales of Empire is free on Kindle next week (1 – 5 October). Here’s why you should grab a copy.
Tales of Empire is a book of short stories. There are only four, which is why even when you have to pay for it, it costs only 99p. The four showcase the work of four very different but uniformly excellent historical fiction writers. (Well, three excellent writers plus me.)
The authors were asked to submit a story set anywhere from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the end of the century. Although they all write conventional historical fiction with no revisionist agenda, all four stories ended up challenging some of the more traditional approaches to Empire.
I saw a picture somewhere on social media posted by an author who is writing their first vampire book. I can’t find it now, but it showed a couple (presumably vampires) in a dance hold.
It will be fun if someone else produces a vampire tale featuring dancers with, let’s say, specialist dietary requirements, but I hope, dear readers, that you won’t forget that you saw it here first. My ‘Galbraith & Pole’ series (three so far, but there will be more) started with Something Wicked which features murder, mystery and tango.
They say you should write about what you know and I’m putting together this blog post between Monday night’s tango and Wednesday night’s tango with a couple more evenings of tango planned for the weekend. It’s fair to say that the references to tango in the book are well researched.
The idea of tango-dancing vampires came on one of my many visits to Buenos Aires, a city almost as famous for its spectacular cemeteries as for the celebrated dance. You seem to see so many more people after dark then are around in the day and, first thing in the morning, it’s easy to believe that the weary, somnambulant creatures propping themselves up on public transport are related to the Undead.
Buenos Aires street scene. Note that the dancers stay in the shadows
Chief Inspector Pole is not your typical vampire. He’s urbane and sophisticated and has been known to cook with garlic just to make a point. But mess with him and you can see a more ruthless side to his character. Fortunately, he uses his powers for good – mostly.
If you haven’t read my Urban Fantasy books before, give Something Wicked a go. It’s just £2.99 on Kindle.
Amazon reviews
Here are some of the things people have said about it on Amazon:
If you enjoy light, amusing and elegant humour and would relish the thrills and chills of the supernatural kind, then Something Wicked is definitely for you.
Cleverly-conceived, well-written and excellently plotted
I shall never look at Brompton Cemetery in quite the same way again!
A really great read! Who knew a story about vampires, detectives and tango could be so entertaining?!
I imagine that everybody who reads this blog has realised by now that I write historical fiction. What I think some people still don’t know is that I have a sideline in Urban Fantasy.
I enjoy writing Urban Fantasy. It takes more research than I had expected. Sometimes I need to consult 16th century French volumes about werewolves. Other times I’m checking maps of the Palace of Westminster or the type of weaponry favoured by Special Forces. It’s still massively easier than all the historical research that underlies the Burke series. The field trips, too, are much simpler. A visit to Brompton cemetery is much less demanding than a trip to Portugal, although Portugal was a more romantic place to have a holiday.
What exactly is Urban Fantasy? Basically, it’s fantasy stories, featuring such old-time favourites as vampires and werewolves, but set in realistic contemporary settings.
A vampire hero
I’m just finishing the third of my Galbraith & Pole books. These all feature a Metropolitan Police detective, Chief Inspector Galbraith, who has ended up partnering Chief Inspector Pole from the mysterious Section S. While Galbraith is very human, Pole is a vampire. To start with, Galbraith is uncomfortable working with the Undead, but gradually they become good friends. I like to think of the books as police procedurals with added bite.
Why a vampire? The idea came to me on a visit to Buenos Aires, a city distinguished by amazing cemeteries in which the dead rest in little houses that form busy streets. Buenos Aires is, of course, also famous for tango. Tango in South America is mainly a nocturnal activity and I found it easy to imagine the dead leaving their mausolea to dance. Tango songs often feature death and lost love, so I thought they would appeal to vampires.
Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires
My beloved explained gently to me that English readers might struggle with a story set in a country and culture they didn’t know. Could I move my vampires to London, for example? So I came up with a vampire sub-culture based around Brompton Cemetery.
Brompton Cemetery, London
The idea of Urban Fantasy is to have your fantastical creatures firmly based in the real world. Could I make a credible 21st century vampire?
Creating vampires that could live among us involved I certain amount of tweaking of the vampire legend. Obviously my vampires can’t go out in daylight, although high factor sunscreen can extend their operating hours a little. They wouldn’t be vampires if they didn’t drink blood, but they really don’t need that much blood and the vampire subculture does have humans who get a kick out of making donations – or, at a pinch, there is animal blood. Like traditional vampire, it takes piercing the heart to kill them, although a stake is not necessary: a bullet will do the job just as well.
Chief Inspector Pole explains that many of the other attributes people ascribe to vampires are just myths. He enjoys garlic and it’s perfectly possible to take his photo.
Pole dislikes the term ‘vampire’, which he thinks has negative connotations. Instead, he prefers to speak of ‘the Others’, as opposed to the Mortals they live amongst. They are able to hide in plain sight because of a long-standing arrangement whereby they make their services available to the Crown in exchange for a blind eye being turned to their existence.
Pole used to be called Paole. Perhaps he is related to the historical vampire Arnold Paole, who lived in Serbia in the early 18th century and whose vampiric activities were the subject of an official report by the Austrian authorities. Who knows?
Do I believe in vampires? Let’s put it this way: in the tango clubs of London I meet people who seem to have been dancing for decades but who never show signs of aging. And I’ve never seen them out by daylight.
Monsters in the Mist
I’m just finishing the third Galbraith & Pole story, which finds them out of London, hunting a mysterious killer in rural mid-Wales. Both Galbraith and Pole are creatures of the city and entirely out of their comfort zone on open moorland with nothing to disturb the silence but sheep. There is something out on the hills, though: something that has killed once and may well kill again.
Our heroes’ search for the secret behind the monsters takes them to Porton Down, where scientists are pushing genetic research into dangerous areas. It ends in a bloody climax at a secret military base hidden at the end of a service road on the M4.
Porton Down is a real place as is the secret military base. In this crazy 21st century world, is it really the vampires that are the hardest thing to believe?
The Galbraith & Pole series
The first Galbraith & Pole book, Something Wicked, sees Pole working with Galbraith to track down rogue vampires who have killed a member of the House of Lords. There’s a lot of tango. (I told you that vampires like tango.)
The second book, Eat the Poor, asks, if your MP was a werewolf, would anybody notice.
Both books are available on Amazon as paperbacks or on Kindle.
Monsters in the Mist will be looking for beta readers in the next week or two. I’m hoping it will be ready in time for Halloween. That seems appropriate.
The trouble with anniversaries is that they come round every year. I’ve been threatening to spend less of my time writing blog posts so as we, yet again, mark the anniversary of the British invasion of Buenos Aires, I’m recycling one from last year. (I’ve edited it a bit though.) The invasion featured a prominent role for Sir Home Popham, who is the subject of a biography that Jacqueline Reiter, one of my fellow-authors in Tales of Empire, has just finished writing. She’s a brilliant researcher and a great writer, so I hope we’ll revisit Popham soon once her book is out. (Who knows? I might even be able to persuade her to write something here.)
It would be nice if Jacqueline’s new book were to generate more interest in the invasion, as most people are unaware of it.
British forces captured Buenos Aires on 27 June 1806. It’s one of the least well-known campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars but the first of the James Burke books, Burke in the Land of Silver, centres on the run-up to this battle (not that there was really a battle) and its aftermath (which was much more exciting).
Why did Argentina matter?
The British invasion of Buenos Aires is often overlooked, possibly because it does not reflect particularly well on British military prowess. Spain’s South American possessions were important primarily because of the silver that they produced. Britain was anxious that, with Spain about to join the war on Napoleon’s side, the French should not get their hands on South American bullion. South America was also felt to be a relatively soft target, because of the unrest amongst the population there who were growing increasingly unhappy with Spanish rule.
Enter Sir Home Popham
Enter the extraordinary Commodore Home Popham. Almost forgotten until recently, Popham has suddenly become fashionable with both historians and novelists, and keeps on popping up all over the place. He deserves this newfound interest because Sir Home Riggs Popham was an extraordinary character.
Sir Home Riggs Popham
Popham was a naval officer: his rank kept slipping about depending on whether or not he was politically in favour and on the effectiveness of his efforts at self-promotion. He had been sent to the Cape of Good Hope with a squadron carrying 6,000 men to capture the place, but the Cape fell unexpectedly easily, leaving him with a small army and no war to use it in. At this point, he decided that he’d head to Buenos Aires, taking 1,635 men with him (the rest being left to garrison the Cape). Deprived of a change for glory in South Africa, he would find it in South America. They sound pretty much the same, so why not?
Historians still argue about whether this decision was politically sanctioned or not. It was certainly never official, but there’s quite a lot of evidence that the government did encourage him to attack Buenos Aires.
Enter James Burke
Either way, Popham arrived in the River Plate in June 1806, where he sails into the story of Burke in the Land of Silver. The Plate is a difficult river to navigate. Popham was quoted at the time as saying, “It was a bit bumpy,” as his ships nearly grounded on sandbanks. According to some accounts Popham was helped to navigate the unfamiliar river by a British agent. If so, it’s quite likely that the real James Burke was involved. Was he really? The joy of writing about a secret agent is that what exactly he did do is a secret. He may genuinely have been there, but we can’t know for sure.
A square rigged ship on the Rio Plate. (It’s a very big river.)
Popham was in charge of the force while it was on the water, but once it landed control was handed over to Colonel William Beresford. The illegitimate son of the 2nd Earl of Tyrone, Beresford had served under Wellington and was held by many (though not Wellington himself) to have a less than perfect grasp of military strategy. (He features in Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras too. If you read that, you’ll know that I’m not a fan.) He landed his troops at Quilmes, fifteen miles from Buenos Aires. The Spanish did not have enough troops to mount an adequate defence and, as Popham had predicted, Beresford had an easy march, brushing aside the meagre forces sent to oppose him. On the 27 June 1806, Buenos Aires surrendered.
Things end badly
James Burke had arrived in Buenos Aires with instructions to prepare the way for a British invasion. He could congratulate himself on a job well done. But with the military victory easily achieved, Beresford had to move from winning the war to winning the peace. He told the locals he had come to liberate them from Spain and made promises of generous treatment of the city.
Beresford’s original proclamation promised peace and prosperity
In the end, though, he proved no better at handling the aftermath of war than some more modern occupying powers. The confiscation of the State treasury suggested to many people that the invasion was little more than a pirate raid and restrictions on trade with Spain threatened to bankrupt the economy. A series of missteps turned the population against the British and the locals rose in revolt. The British were driven out of Buenos Aires, their tails between their legs.
Aftermath
With the Spanish rising against the French, Napoleon never did get his hands on that silver. The Spanish colonists became our allies again. James Burke did return to Argentina where I like to think he contributed to the struggle of the locals to free themselves from Spanish rule. Whether he did or not, the population did rise against Spain and the independence of Argentina was declared on July 9, 1816 by the Congress of Tucumán.
Nobody is quite sure what happened to James Burke after his ventures in South America, but evidence from the Army rolls suggests that he remained in the Army with a pattern of movement between regiments and ranks that suggested continued to work in intelligence until well after the war with France was over.
Burke in the Land of Silver
Burke in the Land of Silver is the first of the stories I’ve written about James Burke. All my stories have a solid basis in historical fact, but this one is the closest to a true story. Burke’s adventures, including his improbable romantic entanglements with royalty, are pretty close to what actually happened. The story grew out of my love for Buenos Aires and I have visited many of the places featured in the book. It’s a rollicking good read, as well as an excellent introduction to a little-known bit of Britain’s military and political history. It’s available on Kindle at £2.99 (buy it quickly: this price won’t hold forever) and in paperback at £7.99.
Picture credit
‘The Glorious Conquest of Buenos Ayres by the British Forces, 27th June 1806’ Coloured woodcut, published by G Thompson, 1806. Copyright National Army Museum and reproduced with permission.
My blog is called History and Books and Dance and Stuff so a historical fiction book about tango ticks pretty well all the boxes. And The Gods of Tango has quite a lot of Stuff too. In fact it’s a vast, sprawling work about tango and Buenos Aires and Italy and sexuality and those old tango perennials, love and death.
I can’t begin to discuss the plot, partly because there are twists and turns and I don’t want to spoil it for you and partly because the 384 packed pages defy synopsification. (Is that a word? It should be.)
What you need to know is that the story starts in 1913 with Leda arriving in Buenos Aires, leaving a narrow life in a village just outside Naples in search of opportunity in the New World. In the first of many shocks in the book, all her plans are thrown into disarray before she has even left the boat and she finds herself struggling to survive in a city that seems to teeter forever on the edge of madness.
It’s a story packed with characters, all so perfectly drawn that you never get lost, but one of the biggest, most important, characters is Buenos Aires itself and particularly San Telmo, a part of the city I feel particularly at home in. The danger, excitement and opportunity of the city is perfectly captured. It is overcrowded and filthy (even more so in 1913 than now). Yet, as today, it holds you. Leda knows that Buenos Aires destroys its children, yet she cannot bring herself to leave. A peaceful life in a small Italian village is no longer something she can settle for.
Leda falls in love with tango. The music, she thinks, can save her. And it does, though it means she must sacrifice everything. (No spoilers, but ‘everything’ isn’t too much of a stretch here.) She carves out a life in the violent world of tango. She is there as tango moves from the bars and the brothels to the dance halls and eventually the grand clubs and cabarets, even achieving an international respectability. But for Leda, it is always about the music of the people, starting with the rhythms brought from Africa with slavery. (The Gods of Tango is unusual in featuring a black bandoneon player whose grandfather was probably a slave. Argentina used to have a substantial black population but no one talks about that now.)
If you are interested in the history of tango (you’ve probably realised I am), then The Gods of Tango is worth reading just for its description of how and why the music developed through the Golden Age. But the book is much, much more than that. I’ve never read a book by a woman which understands so well the reality of being a man. And when she deals with different aspects of sexuality, she writes better than anyone else I have read, or ever expect to read.
De Robertis has won prizes and fellowships and is definitely a ‘literary author’, a label I am generally suspicious of. But this is someone who has earned their reputation through extraordinary hard work as well as an exceptional ability to write. Leda’s life in Italy was researched in Italy. De Robertis reached Italian emigration to Argentina and Afro-Argentinian history (an area which, as I’ve mentioned, is generally overlooked). She studied the violin as well as tango history and learned to dance. She has explored Buenos Aires today and developed a deep understanding of its history. And she writes fantastic prose. (I just said that, but I’m saying it again.)
I’m getting carried away. All I can say is that this is an astonishing book.
